Thursday, October 30, 2008

Better Than a Poke in the Eye!



































We are here in Gulfport, Missississississippi (love those "issi's" so I thought I'd add some more!).Yep, almost home but not quite. I used my Blackberry Biz Finder to tell me what restaurants were near our hotel.
There were quite a few that came up--over 70 restaurants/fast food places/etc. One of them was Emeril's Gulf Coast Fish House.
I LOVE Emeril. I love watching his show. "Let's kick up a notch! BAM!!!!!" Love it when he says that.
I probably wouldn't ever cook any of his meals but I love watching him. He's like a cute teddy bear. He could be making the bed for all I care. I would love watching him do that too--all he had to do was say, "BAM"!

Okay, I digress, sorry about that.
When I first suggested that we go Emeril's, Zip wasn't interested. He's not a big fish eating person. When I looked at the other 69 choices, I wasn't really thrilled with any of those, so I re-suggested Emeril's to Zip.

Zip being Zip, agreed to going to Emeril's. Yeah!!! I was thrilled.
Come to find out, Emeril's Gulf Coast Fish House is inside a casino/resort called, Island View Casino Resort, which is right by the Gulf of Mexico. How exciting, right? Well, I was excited.
In we went. We found out that Emeril's wouldn't open for dinner until 5:30pm; it was 5pm! We had 30 minutes to kill.
So what do you think I suggested we do? Yep, play some slots. I walked around looking at the slot machines. I picked out a machine that was really pretty! That's my criteria! It has to be a pretty machine!!!!! The slot machine I picked had all these colorful flowers and coordinating pots and stuff. I liked it. I sat down. Zip picked the one next to me, and we started playing.

Zip played for a long time on $10--lost/won; won/lost; won/won/lost; lost/lost/lost. I played for quite a while too but went through $35.
After Zip lost the $10, I gave him a $20. He went to a machine behind me and played.
When I lost all my money, I got up and sat next to Zip and played with another $20. It wasn't a pretty machine but what the heck.
Zip hit something and earned about 28 free spins. Wow!!! We both thought--that's incredible. We both watched it spin all by itself. When all the spins were done, he had $69.
Zip being Zip--stopped playing!
What made him ask me this next question, I'll never know but he asked me if I remembered him locking the van! I told him that I thought he had but he better go check. So he cashed out and gave me the ticket.
I continued to play!
Don't ask me what I did but I hit something and won $100. I looked at my total credits on the slot machine and it read $108.
Well, I'm not a gambler at heart. I was ahead of the game so I cashed out and got a ticket with $108.50 on it.
With Zip's ticket and my ticket, I had $177.50 in tickets.
I waited for Zip to come back. (He had locked the car--whew!!!!)
We both were gushing like we had won a million dollars! (Doesn't take much to make us happy!)
We went to the cashier and got cash for the tickets.
We put a total of $85 in the slots with a return of $177.50!!!!!!! Not much, but we were happy!

And what was our original purpose for coming into the casino--to eat at Emeril's.
I knew that eating at Emeril's would NOT be cheap but what I didn't know was that we would eat FOR FREE.
Our meal came to about $80 (which included 2 yummilious meals, a cute square pan of the most wonderful cornbread we've ever eaten, 2 soft drinks, and one HUGE slice of Emeril's signature Banana Cream Pie with shaved chocolate and caramel sauce, and tip).
Zip had Tamarind Glazed Double Cut Pork Chops with Green Chili Mole Sauce and Caramelized Sweet Potatoes.
I ordered a Pan Seared Black Drum over pasta with a creamy lobster sauce and spinach and carrots.
So we walked away with a wonderful meal in our tummies AND with $12.50 more than we came in with, and that's better than a poke in the eye, right?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I sure hope I have such luck next week when I am in Las Vegas. I am not much of a gambler either. But if I am there, I have to gamble, right!??